13 Moons ... ( *** Off, I'm Fabulous )

moo2moo

I think you've already decided what you are doing. Whether you call it a presents fund or a laptop fund or an unsealed pot its all money that you have saved with the intention of spending on the things that are important to you. Yes you could use the money to replace the ISA funds but would that make you truly happy? You've achieved more in the last year than you have in the previous few. You've been very hard on yourself to achieve your goals. Only you can decide if the need to keep your promise to DD2 outweighs the desire to keep the lid on the sealed pot shut for another few months.

You don't need food or booze or treats to have a nice Christmas. You'll have that just by having the DDs with you. In fact the nicest Christmases are usually the ones where the most effort goes into making the day special as opposed to the ones where lots of cash is flung at it. Think back to the excitement of making paper chains as opposed to opening a pack of shop bought decorations. There are some things money can't buy.

museumworker

Lula-Hula wrote: »

when you need to pay £400 to get your lips injected with filler then I suppose every penny counts & you'll step on whoever to keep the signs of ageing at bay - miaooow .

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Sooo close to DFD now! :j:j

Lula-Hula

[STRIKE]Morning[/STRIKE] ahem afternoon all .

Souk - very glad to hear that your Mum is much better now :j

I'm being a thoroughly lazzy moose today - having laundered & gardened all yesterday I'm taking ti quite easy today. That means wandering around in 'jamas with tv on & DD self feeding with toast & bananas.

I had to respond to soem family emails & then moved on to some more surveys ... am a mere 45 points away form another £5 amazon voucher.

I've received a flyer form local chain of garden centres with lost of goodies offers on plants, gloves, tools etc. We were all set to head off that way for the bogof cream tea then we spotted that offer doesnt start until May . Probably for the best though as inspite of my optimism, I havent lost any further pounds this week .

I have however, come up with a brilliant plan for brightening up the garden & using up some leftover paint. I have a tin of serisouly pink paint that I bough a couple of years ago with intention of doing a feature wall in my room. Since that clearly impulsive moment in time, I have realised that as I'm no longer 6 years old I quite like keeping the walls & floor white & just having the odd bit of colour to liven things up. Believe me a strategically abandoned pair of fuschia Converse can definitely liven up a floor

Anyway, while perusing the pages of Good Housekeeping in the library ( I woudnt have the audacity to actually buy it ) I saw a pic of a garden bench that had been painted bright pink with the tag line of 'brightening up a dull corner'. So, the rotten old cheapo picninc bench that is currently doing it's best to become camouflaged with the damp greeny stuff that appears on wood, is now going to get the shock of its life when it's glammed up with 'Sexy Pink. emulsion :rotfl:

Cant wait - it's my kind of painting too - no precison required - can just slap a brush about in a random manner.

The torturous cheapo dining chairs that could well have been used as Victorian posture refining equipment might well be getting a similar make over. I'm bidding on a sweet little round table & 2 chairs on ebay. I love round tables & it;s crying out for a 'shabby chic-over' which will use up the rest of my tin of white paint that needs to go .

I weeded over the fruit bed & the rockery-ish area & discovered that lots of last years plants are growing - I have high hopes for the holly hocks this year. I also dead headed the hydrangea bush & having assessed the bags of debris, I reckon a bonfire will be require soonish.

I'm so much happier when I can get outside & potter in the garden, it fills me with optimism & a sense of doing that something that really counts.

Moo & Souk thanks for your valued thoughts on the Sealed ish Pot. I quite agree about christmas not needing to be expensive to be enjoyed & having chatted with DD1 last night & remembered that 2 years ago when we stayed home we had a brilliant time. We dont need loads of booze, but it would be nice to have good food & also to have some spare cash for the extras like ice skating or panto / shows.

So, I only need another £240 to reach the christmas fund target & it would be [STRIKE]very lazy[/STRIKE] a shame to use it for DDs laptop. I do still have another 20 - 25 weeks to get the laptop funds together. At £20 a week, that would bring in another £400 which should cover the lappie & software.

Ladies, I wont worry about the ISA for now, I do have a list of various items I want to buy for the home & need to work out how best to acquire those alongside saving for lappie, crimbo & maybe a holiday too. If there is money left, then it will go into the ISA, or I may start a pension fund. Virgin seem to do one that's very simple.

It is quite exciting to think that while we will still be living on a strict budget, now it's with the purpose of saving for new items rather than paying for old ones.


So, April will be a bit tight due to childcare & piano lessons, but I will be doing a tatco shop on the 1st to stock up on household goodies & will then allocate a weekly budget out of what's left ... rather than previous method of spending £100 at the beginning of the month & then another £50 a week on top.

I cant hold out any longer & have already decided that we'll be having a
curry tonight. Need to get my @ss in gear so we can pop down to Waitrose & I can spend my £5 voucher in Boots which runs out tomorrow.

Back later to confess all spends & lusting over F1 cars

bye for now
xx

Lula-Hula

Err yes, shamefully it's true,

my trip to Waitrose ended up costing rather more than I planned. This was largely due to there being some good offers that I just couldn't resist - namely the delicious organic pasta sauces I buy because it's impossible to make them for the same price, trust me, it really cannot be done.

There were also a few household items that were irresistibly bargainous & in spite of offers on low-fat yoghurt & milk, still I spent £56.58 in there, of which £43.58 was on groceries. That brings the March grocery bill to a freakingly outrageous £290.97p & my total spends on food & household stuff to over £300 _pale_.

Soooo, I'll be needing to slash a juicy £100 off that horror-fest in April. Apparently, I need to dust off my meal planning skills & start using them. Very soon.

I then headed off to Boots to spend my £5 voucher & actually spent £8.50 in order to use it. Funny how nothing in the range costs less than £10 :mad: ensuring that you spend a fiver you probably wouldnt have done otherwise.

Still, I have now increased my points to a worthy £15 which means I'm only another £40 from another bottle of perfume. Having now come within £4 of my overdraft & as it's not that warm today I opted to head for home rather than the garden centre to buy more stuff. That can wait until next weekend.

I noticed that my Boots receipt gives me half price deals on sunglasses which could be useful as I'm down to just one pair since squishing my head (& the sunglasses) in the car door the other day . Having finally healed from the avocado stabbing incident with only a small scar & a bit of lump under the skin, I now have a small gash & delightful yellow colouring around my left eye. It's really tender & a bit lumpy on the brow bone but not too obvious.

I must get an early night tonight - what with clocks going forward & the Grand Prix on at 6am, I'll be good for nothing all day. Really want to paint the bench tomorrow too just needs to be a bit less cold.

I'm away to conjure up a delicious tikka masala with peshwari naan :drool:
xx

skint_spice

Lula-Hula wrote:

It is quite exciting to think that while we will still be living on a strict budget, now it's with the purpose of saving for new items rather than paying for old ones.

I particularly liked that bit! So true .

I need to join you on the food budgeting, used to be really strict but now seem to be upping the budget constantly and also eating out/buying sandwiches a lot too. Will have to change that for April:cool:.

Karmacat

Lots of thoughtfulness - I can really see that being too strict about keeping pots for various things at differing times in the future can become really counter productive - in spite of the grocery bill and the ebay addiction, lol, you *are* saving/paying off wodges of debt - I think maybe you'd forgotten that little fact? And, catching up because I've been away, it sounds like you have a really tricky situation going on with home-job I don't envy you that. I wonder if you could ever go self employed on home job on a part time basis?

And, oh - bright pink benches! Love it! Have you done it yet? How did it go? Please say you're still going to do it if you haven't done it, pleez pleez!

Lula-Hula

Thanks for your thoughts Karma,

great to have you back :j

I've missed your input although other lovelies have been providing plenty of input in your absence

I dont really want the hassle of going self employed with home-job, the beauty of doing it for someone else means they collect & deliver the work, pay the insurance & deal with all the paperwork & legalities of being a business. It would take up far too much time if I had to do all that.

I'll just have to not take it all too seriously & see what happens. I'm very trusting in the universe to show me when the time is right to make changes.

I havent done the bench yet - by the time we got back from shopping & I'd had a half hour chat with neighbour about his split radiator & various other car related topics ( he seems to think I know about motor matters :huh: :shhh: ) it was too blimmin cold ... but it will get done as I think it's the best idea ever .

Will be up early to watch Grand Prix, put load of laundry on & then off out to the garden with tin of paint in one hand & phone in the other.

I still havent set up a flickr account yet but am taking pics of everything so that one day I can share them all. Connie & Victoria have loads of buds & are definitely going to burst in to blossom any day.

I'm now thinking of raised veg beds in fab colours too - violet & turquoise spring to mind

I'm starting to feel a bit carried away & Queen of Hearts ish now :rotfl:

Have had all the lights off for Earth Hour & far to lazy to turn them back on again now so sat in darkness & about to stumble off to bed where it's all warm & cosy.

Will deliver bench painting update tomorrow


Skinty - good to see you again we shall be Awesomely frugal for April ... boring but necessary. I'm off work for 11 days so that should help a bit ... I think.

taxi73

Great idea about the bench and raised beds ...sounds really funky.
Know the feeling about the shopping budget..I've never done one myself and I should really as I spend a lot.

Lula-Hula

taxi73 wrote: »

Great idea about the bench and raised beds ...sounds really funky.
Know the feeling about the shopping budget..I've never done one myself and I should really as I spend a lot.

Hello lovely Taxi,

I've been awake for ages - half watching Grand Prix & half snoozing. Annoyingly, it's a bit damp here today so probably not the best for painting at the moment. Hopefully it will brighten up a bit later.

The grocery budget is a shocker & I'm quite ashamed. I think a lot of it is due to the diet I was doing; no way is eating smoked salmon going to be as cheap as a jacket potato or pasta. I do like fresh veg & that's not as cheap as the frozen stuff but hopefully the magic veggie garden will help reduce costs a bit.

It's always the grocery budget that can be reduced in this house, I can never quite totally discard my ethics about farming methods, animal welfare & fairtrade in favour of saving money.

I was up late reading news on The Budget & the changes to taxation etc. This led me on to the HMRC website to reassess my own tax credit situation. According to the calculations I did, it seems I'll be losing about £100 a month in Tax Credits which is a bit of a worry. I wont know for sure until I get all the forms through, but that will actually have quite an impact on life.

I know that my savings funds are quite generous & do allow for a bit of excess spending, but £100 is still a scary amount of income to lose each month - to view it in terms of my expenses, that's my childcare fees, or my car costs ( fuel + tax, insurance & repairs) or the utilities bills.

I'm now feeling very blessed that I've been able to clear the debt. I can forsee many more people being forced into further debt as they struggle to maintain living standards. It has also made me think that I really do need to get some regular saving plan in place.

I'm away to do final load of laundry & then hopefully get outside with my paint

Does anyone else spends hours on budgeting & planning & constantly trying to make it all add up ? I go over & over my figures, trying to find a way to be richer :rotfl:

Lula-Hula

My bench is pink & it is truly awesome


Having a quick lunch break of left over curry from last night - a complete carb fest, but truly the bench is a wonder to behold :rotfl:.

I'm having a dumb moment again - cannot get my phone & lappie to talk to eachother :mad: so unable to send pics at the moment.

Going to have to get someone to write down step by step what I need to do .

Going to do a second coat of paint in a bit & then prowl around the premises looking for other items to daub :rotfl: